To a friend I’m yet to meet

Getting back to this sense of something missing… For a time, I felt I had a good grip on love. I allowed myself to receive and I also invested in giving, caring for, and taking great care not to get in the way of another’s peace, often going the extra mile. But these are the fundamentals in love. Right? No gold star there.
I even did some reading on “love languages” so that I would be familiar with what’s on offer since it was the talk of the town. I worked hard to be well-versed, wanting to fill the “love tanks” of those in my life while keeping a watchful eye on the levels of my own.

I am not going to lie, that model was unquestionably useful; it gave me a language for the hard talks of how I receive and give love. But if I am being totally truthful with you, from the very first moment I came across it and even after utilising it, it ultimately made me feel less like a lover and more like a bookkeeper. Something deep-seated in me began to reject it, by and large. I became uncomfortably aware that, despite my best intentions, there was a scoreboard being used to record my efforts as much as I was keeping a subconscious scoreboard – a record of debits and credits, of services performed and affirmations due. It was a closed system, and it was exhausting. It is exhausting. For me, the love languages approach feels like operating from a place of scarcity where two half-empty cups are desperately trying to fill each other – a noble, yet ultimately impossible, endeavour.

At the back of my head would reside this silent question: “Is this all there is?”

It is a question that can be consuming, haunting you like a shadow for years. The emotion that comes with the question is even worse because it has the potential to push us toward drastic and compulsive choices; anything to get rid of the profound discontent that sits inside of us, waiting to turn into resentment – for our situations, our surroundings, and even the people we love.

I have been fortunate – very fortunate – that even when I was unhappy profoundly and hurt, I never made the transition to resentment. But man, the persistent feeling that ‘something is missing’ ate away at me gradually. Because, inexorably, the thought turns inward: perhaps I am the one who is missing the point. It’s the subtle humiliation of, “Why don’t I get it?” Not a very comfortable feeling at all.

And then, something changed.

It was not a lightning flash or a great revelation. It was a gentle, quiet impression that came into my heart while in prayer. A thought so simple it was almost obvious. Can you relate?

You know… that moment when clarity comes, and you realise the truth has been in front of you the whole time, just waiting to be noticed? And when you ultimately notice it, you suddenly have the words to describe the very state of your soul… That is precisely what happened with me.

The trigger was a conversation in which I was asked, for the umpteenth time, “What is your love language?” This time I stopped. As I hesitated, the person pushed, “Tsholo, it’s not that difficult. Why do you want to make easy things complicated? What is your love language? Is it acts of service? Quality time? What is it?”

Luckily, the questioner was a fellow recipient of grace from whom I learn about loving and knowing God, so I requested a moment to think. When I finally answered, typical of me, it was with yet more questions: “What is love? What is language? I need to really think about this.” Something deep had been stirred. In the midst of my life’s complexities, I shelved the thinking for another time. Unbeknownst to me, a seed had been sown on fertile soil.

Not long afterwards, one morning, as I brushed my teeth and reflected, the term “Intercession” fell into my spirit.

I kid you not, that word made me want to go out and defend myself to all the people I ever felt had not understood my love language. I was so thrilled to have finally discovered a key to something that had plagued me all my life, because sometimes our way of loving is not understood. In my own life, it was not only other people; I finally had words to express one of the essential ways I show love to myself.

Alright, so I’m there, having my ‘eureka’ moment, prepared to go back to my friend with the promised answer, when a new question came to mind: where does “intercession” fall into the given ‘love languages’ system?

It wasn’t straightforward to me. Then another question came: Is intercession even a language? Then another: Is love a language at all?

Ah! The spiralling began. It continued until I decided to sit with these questions, to inquire into my thoughts and feelings. All of this culminated in a simple perspective-shifting realisation:

What if love is not a language we learn to have our needs fulfilled, but an attitude we take to give from a place of abundance?

It was no surprise, therefore, that this understanding eventually led me back to God. “…, God is love,” after all (1 John 4:8). This one idea changed everything. I changed how to proceed with answering that question I had at the beginning of this letter: “What if you have been haunted by the feeling that something vital is missing, especially in matters of love?”. I felt like I finally had the GPS coordinates to the answer.

There is validity to the statement that love is a universal language. Reducing it to five categories – basically interested in one’s preferences and one’s tank, with a sympathetic consideration for the preferences of others – is incredibly restrictive and not universal at all.

In came the word “Posture”.

A posture, on the other hand, is about my orientation toward the next person. A posture indicates a readiness to move, to change, to serve. It shifts the entire focus away from the self and toward the other.

In the Bible, “posture” refers both to the physical body positions during worship and to the spiritual attitude of the heart, with the latter being the primary focus. Physical postures like standing, kneeling, prostration, and sitting all convey a heart attitude of humility, submission, respect, or devotion to God. The Bible encourages a posture of the heart that is humble, obedient, and aligned with God’s will, and it also uses metaphorical language about walking, standing, and sitting to describe different spiritual ways of life.

A friendly warning, however:

• This concept of posture must be based on abundance – God’s love -Agape -for it to be long-lasting, sustainable, enough, filling, rewarding;
• It’s more easily said than done; and
• It does not nullify the use of love languages and other tools and instruments to better position yourself to love others.

Then, after all, my friend, I reached something that I would like to present to you:

This solves the empty cup challenge. We cannot fill each other; that is true. But what if we were never supposed to? What if we were designed to stand alongside a river -an endless, universal, bottomless source of God’s divine love -and simply let the overflow pour through us into the lives of others?

Friend, I am writing to you because this idea is burning a fire in me, and I have to hope I am not the only one who has looked for it. I don’t have it all figured out. Not by a long shot. But as I’ve started to look into these postures, they feel more true and freeing than anything I’ve known. I am writing to you to say give it a try and see what your experience is.

What if

• Love assumes The Posture of Covenantal Presence?
• A kind of love that simply stays.
• A love that dares to sit in the darkness of a friend’s suffering without trying to repair it, bringing the deep solace of just being present.

What if

• Love is like The Posture of Intercession & Advocacy?
• A love that battles for a person on its knees.
• The silent strength that guards an individual’s name when they are not around.

And what if

• Love takes on The Posture of Edification & Truth?
• A love bold enough not just to affirm, but also to confront.
• The “iron sharpens iron” love that sees the gold in someone and lovingly calls it out, even when it’s uncomfortable.

These are just sketches and outlines of a new kind of being that I’m learning, and working on. It feels like homecoming. It’s a love that doesn’t keep score. A love that isn’t rooted in my performance or your perfection. A love that is, at its core, a response to God’s grace (Mosa wa Modimo).

For indeed Modimo O mosa – God is gracious. God is love. God’s love is the source, the river. With this new way of approaching love, Agape love, all I am asking you to do is to merely learning how to stand in it, taking on postures that enable us to become conduits for God’s love and will to be accomplished in and through our relationships.

I’m sharing this part of my journey with you, dear stranger, with the hope that it will serve to bring some light or liberation. I don’t know if you’ve ever sensed that same gentle yearning for a love that’s larger, deeper, and truer. A love that welcomes peace that surpasses all understanding, God, into each exchange, praying:

“Dear God, I am always imperfect, but I rely on Your grace for sufficiency. Your Word tells us that faith without works is dead (James 2:26), so Lord, in this situation where I am called to love, how can I be a channel so that Your love pours through me, accomplishing Your will?”

Agape love doesn’t come with a new set of rules. This is an invitation to a renewing of our minds and a transformation of our perspective as we serve lovingly.

Your stranger friend on the journey,

Tsholo L. Sehume